Enantiomeric separation of N-protected amino acids by non-aqueous capillary electrophoresis using quinine or tert-butyl carbamoylated quinine as chiral additive.

A capillary electrophoretic (CE) method for the enantioseparation of N-protected chiral amino acids was developed using quinine and tert-butyl carbamoylated quinine as chiral selectors added to nonaqueous electrolyte solutions (NACE). A series of various N-derivatized amino acids were tested as chiral selectands, and in order to optimize the CE enantioseparation of these compounds, different parameters were investigated: the nature of the organic solvent, the combination of different solvents, the nature and the concentration of the background electrolyte, the selector concentration, the capillary temperature, and the applied voltage. The influence of these factors on the separation of the analyte enantiomers and the electroosmotic flow was studied. Generally, with tert-butyl carbamoylated quinine as chiral selector, better enantioseparations were achieved than with unmodified quinine. Optimum experimental conditions were found with a buffer made of 12. 5 mM ammonia, 100 mM octanoic acid, and 10 mM tert-butyl carbamoylated quinine in an ethanol-methanol mixture (60:40 v/v). Under these conditions, DNB-Leu enantiomers could be separated with a selectivity factor (alpha) of 1.572 and a resolution (Rs) of 64.3; a plate number (N) of 127,000 and an asymmetry factor (As) of 0.93 were obtained for the first migrating enantiomer.